On May of 2015 (ty Muschi for your pimd timeline), a.t.a released an update to PIMD that meant that plunder on parties would not change based on energy level.
Hitting a dance bar on party at 1% of energy would yield the same plunder as hitting a dance bar at 100% energy.
The chances of success for a given action would also remain at maximum for the duration of an unload.
Within pvp, people keep their energy high to increase chances of success and plunder. This was logical because as your character becomes exhausted, they will fight more sloppily and make more mistakes. I thought it was very cool that there was a parallel between real life and the game's mechanics. That tiredness exists and you're not just a binary awake or totally exhausted and asleep.
This BINARY then existed in the context of hitting parties in a very specific way: the results of hits from it.
Unfortunately, much else does not follow this trend:
DTW/Pin:
When people are close to being empty of energy, the game takes mercy on them and prevents them from being hit by other players. This is a move that many considered to be fair at the inception of the game because there would be no point in them hitting due to plunder and success chances being too low, and people being able to totally whale on them.
BUT the first and second points do not apply to those who party constantly. Self-pinning on parties became a broken strategy in PIMD, making things too easy and beneficial to those who were defending. CC clubs began to hold their own against entire clubs farming them.
If the binary didn't exist within parties anymore, and a mercy based on the graduated nature of energy (pin), then that is where an imbalance occurred.
A great solution would be to remove the pinning feature.
There are two other simple solutions to make this balanced. Adding to the diminished side, or taking from the larger. To add to the larger side, make pvp plunder and win success chance constant. But if win success chances are constant, battle brackets would have no business being as large as they are and it would kill pvp.
The other simple solution is to revert this graduation, and that is the best solution.
The Barcodes and some other clubs
An early goal of a highly influential club within the game, the Barcodes, was to stammer and cause many cat cafe clubs to close down. Their efforts were legendary, and the prowess of such clubs, and the potential power demonstrated by successful war leaders who demonstrated exceptional game knowledge in their feats were showing their last hurrahs against a system that aimed to reduce the complexity of the game to make it more congenial for casuals.
This update
This update came during the barcodes' conquest against cat cafe clubs. Many cat cafe club owners who paid the developers a lot of money, complained about not having an easy enough way to defend their temperamental and unskilled members, and frankly the ability to just hit cats all the time and make profit despite the efforts of others to vanquish them.
This update served the interests of the developers and cow clubs. While compromising the internal logic of the parallel between real-life college drama and conflict, and the game's mechanics.
People started learning the game by intuiting parallels between real life and its mechs. Tutors help you with your homework and can be called upon like goons, your pupils are your guides and mentors, pranking takes away a lot of your oppo's energy, dancing is a more illustrious career than bashing peoplr up, etc.
An element of this great, artistic tapestry that I believed the original developers saw as a cornerstone of what makes this game a true college simulator, was lost in this update.
It privileged the developers and fairies and severely limited the artistry and mastery that sfw club coordinators could demonstrate, and sealed the fate for cc clubs to become the sole vehicles to high stats.
No matter anyone's efforts today, high stats remain at the end of a road paved with hypnocats (this is mainly due to dorms being constantly released and the release of the xat cafe), and people can barely hope to set you back from that, no matter how skilled (due to this update).
This update was and remains a scourge on the artistic vision of its prime architects and masterful efforts of its players.
The expected response from many players and some developers, today
The response I expect from the developers, today, is something bland about how that goal is dead. Colleges today do not involve fights or pranks or dance-offs or eavesdropping and pitiful drama or conflict of any kind. Colleges today are all about fashion, having the fanciest car, classism, everyone getting along, eavesdropping, cyberbullying, shade rooms, private group chats, and eating ass, hot chip, and lie.
And that this is where the players want it to go.
From players, I will hear that it is too hard to do pvp, and that it is unfair, and they should never be set back by pvp and they would rather learn about how to do all the XC's and trade rather than farm. But dear players, the developers choose where your attention is best spent when they balance the game's features, when they preference certain features over others, and buy-and-large, those features are profitable to them.
They have stopped working on the core of the game, on its vision, and on allowing great gameplay to star. They fool-proofed the meta and the path to success into a long and very expensive game of cat cafe-cookie clicker.
They did that with this update, back in 2015.
They changed the game and bubble-wrapped it for the babies and yes I know you will complain on this thread and say you like the sound of the change, how unequal it was, and how it diminished pvp because it's not the game you know and like now, you casual, but it was an objectively better game back then.
Learning Curve
Prior to this update, the transition from parties to pvp was seamless as when you hit parties, there was some luck involved, plunder was graduated, and it was clear to everyone that the tired you was not as good as the fully-awake, you.
These days, those who go from parties to pvp are easy enough to teach about the differences, but the different paradigm is not doing anyone any favours.
In my experience and opinion, this is the prima donna of bad updates by a.t.a. and all that reverting it will mean is that if you are hitting parties, you will have some more things to consider when making a decision about how many times to hit it, and if people are hitting you, you might sometimes not want to immediately self pin on a party.
Hitting a dance bar on party at 1% of energy would yield the same plunder as hitting a dance bar at 100% energy.
The chances of success for a given action would also remain at maximum for the duration of an unload.
Within pvp, people keep their energy high to increase chances of success and plunder. This was logical because as your character becomes exhausted, they will fight more sloppily and make more mistakes. I thought it was very cool that there was a parallel between real life and the game's mechanics. That tiredness exists and you're not just a binary awake or totally exhausted and asleep.
This BINARY then existed in the context of hitting parties in a very specific way: the results of hits from it.
Unfortunately, much else does not follow this trend:
DTW/Pin:
When people are close to being empty of energy, the game takes mercy on them and prevents them from being hit by other players. This is a move that many considered to be fair at the inception of the game because there would be no point in them hitting due to plunder and success chances being too low, and people being able to totally whale on them.
BUT the first and second points do not apply to those who party constantly. Self-pinning on parties became a broken strategy in PIMD, making things too easy and beneficial to those who were defending. CC clubs began to hold their own against entire clubs farming them.
If the binary didn't exist within parties anymore, and a mercy based on the graduated nature of energy (pin), then that is where an imbalance occurred.
A great solution would be to remove the pinning feature.
There are two other simple solutions to make this balanced. Adding to the diminished side, or taking from the larger. To add to the larger side, make pvp plunder and win success chance constant. But if win success chances are constant, battle brackets would have no business being as large as they are and it would kill pvp.
The other simple solution is to revert this graduation, and that is the best solution.
The Barcodes and some other clubs
An early goal of a highly influential club within the game, the Barcodes, was to stammer and cause many cat cafe clubs to close down. Their efforts were legendary, and the prowess of such clubs, and the potential power demonstrated by successful war leaders who demonstrated exceptional game knowledge in their feats were showing their last hurrahs against a system that aimed to reduce the complexity of the game to make it more congenial for casuals.
This update
This update came during the barcodes' conquest against cat cafe clubs. Many cat cafe club owners who paid the developers a lot of money, complained about not having an easy enough way to defend their temperamental and unskilled members, and frankly the ability to just hit cats all the time and make profit despite the efforts of others to vanquish them.
This update served the interests of the developers and cow clubs. While compromising the internal logic of the parallel between real-life college drama and conflict, and the game's mechanics.
People started learning the game by intuiting parallels between real life and its mechs. Tutors help you with your homework and can be called upon like goons, your pupils are your guides and mentors, pranking takes away a lot of your oppo's energy, dancing is a more illustrious career than bashing peoplr up, etc.
An element of this great, artistic tapestry that I believed the original developers saw as a cornerstone of what makes this game a true college simulator, was lost in this update.
It privileged the developers and fairies and severely limited the artistry and mastery that sfw club coordinators could demonstrate, and sealed the fate for cc clubs to become the sole vehicles to high stats.
No matter anyone's efforts today, high stats remain at the end of a road paved with hypnocats (this is mainly due to dorms being constantly released and the release of the xat cafe), and people can barely hope to set you back from that, no matter how skilled (due to this update).
This update was and remains a scourge on the artistic vision of its prime architects and masterful efforts of its players.
The expected response from many players and some developers, today
The response I expect from the developers, today, is something bland about how that goal is dead. Colleges today do not involve fights or pranks or dance-offs or eavesdropping and pitiful drama or conflict of any kind. Colleges today are all about fashion, having the fanciest car, classism, everyone getting along, eavesdropping, cyberbullying, shade rooms, private group chats, and eating ass, hot chip, and lie.
And that this is where the players want it to go.
From players, I will hear that it is too hard to do pvp, and that it is unfair, and they should never be set back by pvp and they would rather learn about how to do all the XC's and trade rather than farm. But dear players, the developers choose where your attention is best spent when they balance the game's features, when they preference certain features over others, and buy-and-large, those features are profitable to them.
They have stopped working on the core of the game, on its vision, and on allowing great gameplay to star. They fool-proofed the meta and the path to success into a long and very expensive game of cat cafe-cookie clicker.
They did that with this update, back in 2015.
They changed the game and bubble-wrapped it for the babies and yes I know you will complain on this thread and say you like the sound of the change, how unequal it was, and how it diminished pvp because it's not the game you know and like now, you casual, but it was an objectively better game back then.
Learning Curve
Prior to this update, the transition from parties to pvp was seamless as when you hit parties, there was some luck involved, plunder was graduated, and it was clear to everyone that the tired you was not as good as the fully-awake, you.
These days, those who go from parties to pvp are easy enough to teach about the differences, but the different paradigm is not doing anyone any favours.
In my experience and opinion, this is the prima donna of bad updates by a.t.a. and all that reverting it will mean is that if you are hitting parties, you will have some more things to consider when making a decision about how many times to hit it, and if people are hitting you, you might sometimes not want to immediately self pin on a party.
Are all these noobs so self absorbed that they cannot imagine something could have actually been better before they were here? Are they unable to grasp the concept that if 90% of veteran players agree that these updates were for the worst, then perhaps they really were...